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Maddy's Christmas Wedding by Rosie Green #LittleDuckPondCafeBook37#review

  Here we are at Book 37 in the Little Duck Pond Cafe series! Maddie's Christmas Wedding is the latest novella by Rosie Green.   With the wedding of the year approaching, excitement is running high at the café! But there's just one problem. Maddy is grappling with a secret. Could it derail all of hers and Jack's glorious plans for their big day? Will there actually be a wedding?   My Thoughts In this latest festive story, we are taken out of Sunnybrook, in fact, out of the country and taken for a wintry stay in Lapland. It is Maddy's hen party gathering so some of the Little Duck Pond characters are along too. The story continues on from the earlier Cosy Nights and Snowball Fights . The setting is idyllic and so different to life at home. Everything shimmers and shines in the snow and the temperatures are extreme. Maddy should be having the time of her life but she finds that she has a lot on her mind and a heartbreaking decision to make.     With the men le...
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The Lazarus Solution by Kjell Ola Dahl #Review #Giveaway

 

My thanks today go to Orenda Books for my place on the Blog Tour for Kjell Ola Dahl's historical thriller, The Lazarus Solution.It is published by Orenda Books on April 27th and you can pre-order here.  I am delighted to say that I have a print copy for you to win. Details of this Giveaway are at the foot of this post.
 

Summer, 1943. Daniel Berkåk, who works as a courier for the Press and Military Office in Sweden, is killed on his last cross-border mission to Norway.

Demobbed sailor Kai Fredly escapes from occupied Norway into Sweden, but finds that the murder of his Nazi-sympathiser brother is drawing the attention of the authorities on both sides of the border.

The Norwegian government, currently exiled in London, wants to know what happened to their courier, and the job goes to writer Jomar Kraby, whose first suspect is a Norwegian refugee living in Sweden … a refugee with a past as horrifying as the events still to come … a refugee named Kai Fredly…
Both classic crime and a stunning exposé of Norwegian agents in Stockholm during the Second World War, The Lazarus Solution is a compulsive, complex and dazzling historical thriller from one of the genre's finest writers.


For fans of Sebastian Faulks, Lars Mytting, Mick Herron and Robert Harris.

My Thoughts

Written with characteristic clarity, this wartime thriller establishes the atmosphere of Northern Europe in the Second World War from the start.  Norway has been occupied by the Nazis. Sweden is neutral. You follow  Jomar Kraby as he tries to establish what happened to a courier who was working for the exiled Norwegian government. Reluctant to take on the job, he sets about the task. Meanwhile, a refugee, Kai Fredly comes to his attention. Throughout, you are aware of the characters watching each other, wary and unsure who to trust. There is a feeling of jeopardy and of waiting for something to happen and of moving in the shadows as events unfold .

    This is an interesting look at the effect of occupation on people’s lives. On the surface, life goes on but underneath the everyday there are secrets. The challenge for the reader is to try to discover who they owe an allegiance to. You sense that must people are waiting for something to change. Others are looking for what they can get to live a comfortable life. Most have a price. Some have an eye to the future, living under a false identity, waiting to see which side emerges as the victor. Kai and Jomar are intriguing characters, especially the latter with his frustrated creativity. With a distinctive tone of stillness and expectancy, you are shown what it must have been like to live under the woke of occupation or threat. By the end, like Kai, you appreciate the luxury of not living according to others’ will. 

In short: trust no one 

    

About the Author


One of the fathers of the Nordic Noir genre, Kjell Ola Dahl was born in 1958 in Gjøvik. He made his debut in 1993, and has since published eleven novels, the most prominent of which is a series of police procedurals cum psychological thrillers featuring investigators Gunnarstranda and Frølich. In 2000 he won the Riverton Prize for The Last Fix and he won both the prestigious Brage and Riverton Prizes for The Courier in 2015. His work has been published in 14 countries, and he lives in Oslo.

You can follow Kjell Ola Dahl on Goodreads  |  Twitter
 
Book link: Amazon UK   
 
Publication day is april 27th 2022.

Thanks to Karen Sullivan and Anne Cater of Orenda Books for a copy of the book and a place on the blog tour. 
 
                                           Check out the rest of the tour!
 

 Giveaway (UK only)



To win a print copy of The Lazarus Solution, just Follow and Retweet the pinned Tweet at @bookslifethings and good luck!

 Closing Date is April 27th 2023 and there is one winner.
*Terms and Conditions –UK only.  The winner will be selected at random via Tweetdraw from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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